To: news@channel4.com : Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 : Subject: Reporter Simon Israel: Piece: Thames Torso claim is Voodoo Killing .
Dear Simon Israel, We were astonished to see such irresponsible reporting in your piece on Channel 4 News tonight. You obviously did not experience the Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic of 1988 because your inflamatory racist broadcast today recreated the same situation.
You seem to aspire to the ignorant White Colonial stereotypes about Voodoo so it may interest you to know that Voodoo (or Voudoun) is a genuine and worthy ancestor religion of great antiquity throughout West Africa which DOES NOT require any form of Human Sacrifice. White people have interminably used this smear to portray natives as uncivilised savages. Please stop doing it. The blood used in some Voodoun rituals is solely obtained from sacrificed animals which are later eaten in a feast which is part of the Voodoun rites. In that it is similar to Hallal slaughter, a rite you would not DARE besmirch for upsetting Islamists whose sensitivities you go to great lengths to protect.
All Voodoun rites are strictly parametered by tradition. Each ritual involves the invocation of one of the Loas or ancient Vodooun Gods. To invoke such gods requires the drawing out of detailed and complex VEVERS ( symbolic monograms), not the scrawling of Nigerian names on white sheets! It is absolutely clear from even the smattering of information given in your piece that this poor boy had NOT been murdered or dismembered in a genuine Voodoun rite, yet you clearly tell the British population that is the case without any evidence whatsoever except for the opinions of an untested self-styled 'expert' in 'Voodoo crime'.
Then you have the audacity to compound your errors by referring to a Christian fundamentalist preacher as some kind of 'expert' on Voodoun in London - simply because he has black skin. How would an avowed Christian know anything about genuine Voodoo. That's like asking a Jew about the finer points of Zen Buddhism. Now you have started the persecution of any innocent believers in a genuine tribal religion who seek to retain their culture in a spiritual-less Britain. Did you realise that you have breached the Human Rights Act which protects individuals from unwarranted attacks on their beliefs?
I remind you that it was that very same cultural blindness (the resorting of the media to Christian fundamentalists who lied their bigoted way into positions of influence) which created the 1989 satanic panic. That destroyed the lives of 86 innocent children. Ten years later you fall for it again.
But why does this have to be a 'ritual killing' at all? It is, as any experienced detective will tell you, not unusual to find cases of dismembered bodies in 'orthodox' murders. It is, after all, a simple method of ruling out identification of the body. As The Dismembered Body In The Suitcase trial which ended this very week proves. The murderer there wasn't Nigerian and he wasnt' into voodoo but it had almost the same scenario as the one you blithely apportion to Voodoists without a shred of evidence. Luckily the police did their job properly in that case and brought the man to book - there was no need to inject mumbo-jumbo as a motive - but if that case had occurred AFTER your report tonight I think we would be looking at 'another' Voodoo killing don't you?
So what was it that persuaded YOU that this was a Voodoo Sacrifice? The production of a white sheet and candles which may or MAY NOT have had something to do with the torso? Or the involvement of yet another 'expert' in ritualistic crime? I remind you dear Simon that every one of the 'experts' in ritual crime which were used by the media in the 1989 scare ended up making those who believed in them look like fools.
Did you know that the Christian Fundamentalist circuit which tried to import the SRA scare into the U.K. was at the same time attempting to do exactly the same in Belgium, Holland and South Africa? Do you know that there is now a clique of Satan Hunters in South Africa who in the past two years have attempted to re-import that very same Satan Scare back into the U.K. in various guises, using claims of Voodoo rites to back them up? We have documented it. I wonder if by any chance the Dutch case you mentioned in your report and Mr South African expert are linked with the fundamentalist campaign to promote the idea of pan-global satanic conspiracy? Want to lay bets on it?
Which is it to be Simon Israel, a scoop expose or just another lie? Bone up on the gameplay on www.saff.connectfree.co.uk and please check the facts before you run with the ball in future.
Yours sincerely, Tony Rhodes, Sub Culture Alternatives Freedom Foundation
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